


This Scene Called Tragic

by oneinspats



Category: 18th & 19th Century CE RPF, History RPF, Napoleonic France, Waterloo - Fandom
Genre: 19th c slash, Historical slash, M/M, Napoleonic France - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-05
Updated: 2012-04-05
Packaged: 2017-11-03 02:48:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/376260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneinspats/pseuds/oneinspats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look at Wellesley and Bonaparte after Waterloo. There are letters, heavy handed symbolism, memories, and a stressed out Sir Hudson Lowe</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Scene Called Tragic

Arthur sleeps and sometimes he has dreams.  
    He calls them dreams. Wishes they were. Kitty says they're nightmares. His brother Richard says they're memories.  
    He just calls them dreams.  
    Dreams with the dying horses. The dying men. The dying ground. The dying battle. The dying war. The dying world.  
    When he arrived in Paris after Waterloo he met an opera singer. She was beautiful and sweet and daring between the hours of evening and morning. Sometimes, she would sneak him into her private rooms and whisper that he was only the second man who had ever been there.  
    'Who was the first?'  
    She looked at him coyly, smiled something secretive, laughed seductively. 'Oh, wouldn't monsieur like to know? I'll give you a hint – you've never met him but you know him better than anyone.'  
    'How should I know him if I've never met him?'  
    'You defeated him on the battle field. That means you know him.'

 

     
    A letter arrives one day. He is sitting in the parlour wishing himself back in India whilst forgetting that he had hated it when he was there. The letter is from the colonies. An island in the Atlantic. He feels dread when he asks where it is from.  
    'St Helena, your grace.'  
    Inside is the foreign script of Sir Hudson Lowe. _Dear Sir, How did you win? How did you defeat him? He's driving me mad._  
    Underneath is the familiar hand of the emperor. _Dear Sir, I think the correct term is 'checkmate'._  
    A package arrives the next day. Inside is a white queen and a scrap of paper with 'E 5' written on it. He burns the paper and the two notes but keeps the chess piece in his desk.  
    He doesn't want to know what's happening on St. Helena.

 

 

    His wife asks him about the chess piece. How did you come by it? Why did _he_ send it to you? What could he mean by it? Who smuggled the letter from Hudson Lowe's desk?  
    'I played a game with him once.'  
    'I thought you two had never met.'  
    He smiles his 'Oh Kitty you are so daft' smile and pats her arm. She is angry at him, he doesn't care.  
    'We haven't _met_. We've never been introduced. It was in Spain. A tavern in between the two lines of battle. He was there and we ended up playing chess. Four games, we ended even. He said the next game should be blitz chess. I said it would be on the field. He just kind of smiled and said 'if you think so, Wellesley'.'  
    He stops. His wife is waiting for more. Waiting for something about Waterloo, a story about the battle that she hasn't heard yet. He doesn't look at her. He looks at the fire, thinks of the chess piece, the foreign eyes that seemed darker in the evening light, the foreign accent stringing together that foreign language. They had spoken Italian over the board, French on the field, nothing in bed.  
    That they spoke nothing in bed signified nothing. Just that they had been silent.

 

     
    Talleyrand was a man Arthur never trusted. He doesn't know what to think when he receives a letter saying 'You should reply, I think he misses you'. He doesn't want to know how the former Foreign Minister knew about the chess piece and the note.

 

 

    He once spoke to a lawyer back when the Emperor had been on the _Bellrophone_. He had been on leave from Paris for a week and wanted to hear English spoken with a proper accent. The lawyer was a small man, sharpish, rat-like named Mackenrot. He had taken on a case of a captain who was being court marshaled for cowardice during the Battle of the Nile.  
    'A bit of a ways back to be court-marshalling him, isn't it?' Arthur had asked. They were standing in a pub eyeing their pints and trying to find a place to sit. 'Poor man probably doesn't even remember what he did wrong.'  
    'Apparently this is the second review of the case. I need a witness from the battle to testify as to the placements of the French ships.'  
    'And?'  
    'There's a potential witness just outside the the harbour.'  
    Arthur went silent. He remembered a chess game. A bedroom game. A laugh on the battle field. His men turning, his men dying. He remembered the Emperor's face with a regretful look, 'je ne suis pas desolee, c'est la guerre. C'est le meme chose avec l'amour, oui?' A shrug. For an Italian he had mastered the French ability to say everything one simple motion.  
    He remembered a battle. A man saying – I've the Emperor in site. His biting reply – Generals don't shoot each other. His smile at the surrender. He had said to the man who had once been an emperor, 'je ne suis pas desolee, c'est la guerre, c'est l'amour, c'est la vie.'   
    'I don't know what you're asking,' He replied to the lawyer evenly.  
    'Let me have him as a witness.'  
    'He'll be on English land. Habeus Corpus.'  
    'He'll be given a trial then,' Mackenrot shrugs. 'Are you against the man being treated civilly?'  
    He replied no, no he's not against civil treatment for civil men. He just doesn't think the former emperor counts as civil. A man who usurps the natural order – he stopped, frowns – the conversation is over. He paid for his pint and left, ignoring that it was the same rain landing on him as was landing on the man who was no longer an emperor.

 

 

    There is a second package. Smuggled off the island by the Irish doctor. Inside it is a pressed flower and a knight. There is no writing, no letter, no note. But Arthur knows that he doesn't need one. Sometimes words are too much, the former-emperor had said, sometimes words are too petty. Sometimes they say too much and mean too little. You say that you will win. Those are your words but your meaning is different.  
    He had asked, amused, it was three in the morning and they were half dressed and drunk – if that isn't what I meant, then what was I saying?  
    You were saying that you are scared and that you don't want to lose but part of you doesn't want to win because you have seen enough to know that winning is the second worst thing to happen in a battle after losing.  
    In his hand is sitting a pressed hibiscus and a knight. On the base of the knight there is nothing written. He doesn't remember where it belonged on the board.

   

    Sometimes he thinks of Waterloo. There had been a question asked, he had burned it before he could answer.  
    _What is your name, Monsieur? What is mine, now?_  
   

 

    The Emperor had sent a letter to him, once, after Spain. It had been short and written with a distracted hand but Arthur knew that he had written it himself because the sides of the page had ink splotches and the Emperor's name was smeared at the end.  
   _Wellesley. Next time you should talk to your men. Get to know them, shake their hands and find out what is going on in their life. You told your Second that I am apparently worth forty thousand Frenchmen in the field. Whilst flattering but grossly inaccurate, the passion my men fight with comes from the simple fact that I remember their names and I shake their hands._  
    _You are not better than them. Stop acting like you are._  
    Arthur had wanted to hit something. Hard. Instead he burned the letter and decided that the one person he hated more than Kitty was the Emperor.

 

 

    It was after Spain. This dream that was a memory that was a ghost of things he felt he should forget. It was after Spain and he was wandering through the court that was Paris wondering what he was supposed to be doing there. The Emperor was created from the Revolution, he remembered thinking. Or was it the other way around, now? The Emperor was not the creature being created but was rather the one doing the creating.  
    He was found in a small room, walls lined with books, several chairs, a fire place lit. It was warm. There was an empty glass of brandy next to one of the chairs.  
    'Monsieur?' The accented French he would never forget stops him. He turns around, military back ram rod straight.  
    'My apologies, I did not mean to intrude.'  
    The Emperor smiled, closed the door, and said – ah mais non, mais non. They are distracted – a wave to the hall – you are not intruding.  
    It was after Spain. When he found himself on the floor underneath a man who claimed to be French but had too much Mediterranean blood in him to be truly French.  
    It was after Spain. When he found his mouth being kissed, his legs being pressed apart, his body being stripped bare.  
    It was after Spain. When he woke with bruises on his back, red lips, sore thighs.  
    It was after Spain. When this dream that was a memory that was a ghost of a fleeting feeling first formed.

 

 

    He walks into his room. It's plain, a camp-bed, a table, an armoir, a desk and a chair. Some have described it as Spartan. He calls it practical. On his bed that night is a small envelope. Sealed with no stamp, no mark of sender. Only his name scrawled across – Arthur Wellesley. No title, no official residence. Just a name. Hand delivered, he thinks. He's picking it up and hoping to find a water mark.  
    Inside is a note. Small, written in haste but with intent. The writer knew what they wanted to say.  
    _Your name is Arthur Wellesley. You were that before you became a Duke. You will be that after you are gone. What is a title when you are dead and buried? What is a dukedom, an empire when you are gone?_  
    _Don't burn this like you burned the rest. I rarely bother to write to someone in person, you should be flattered. I left you a note after the Second to Last Battle (ask Monsieur Lowe about the Last Battle. He might cry if you mention it, though). You didn't respond. I'll ask you the question again._  
_What is your name?_  
_What is mine?_

 

    Kitty finds him in his study one day. She frowns, peers at him, and says, 'Arthur, you've changed.'  
    He looks up and sighs. It is hardly a patient sigh but his wife has learned to ignore them. He's not sure if he admires her more for it or detests her. Or both.  
    'Have I, Kitty?'  
    'Yes, you've grown up.'  
    'Since when?' He wants to snap – Well at least one of us has. But doesn't. He thinks that perhaps a peaceful night is worth more than a petty score against her.  
    'Waterloo.'  
    There is silence. Because sometimes words are too petty. Because sometimes they say too much and mean too little.


End file.
